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Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India
In Cassette Culture, Peter Manuel tells how a new mass medium—the portable cassette player—caused a major upheaval in popular culture in the world's second-largest country. The advent of cassette technology in the 1980s transformed India's popular music industry from the virtual monopoly of a single multinational LP manufacturer to a free-for-all among hundreds of local cassette producers. The result was a revolution in the quantity, quality, and variety of Indian popular music and its patterns of dissemination and consumption.
Manuel shows that the cassette revolution, however, has brought new contradictions and problems to Indian culture. While inexpensive cassettes revitalized local subcultures and community values throughout the subcontinent, they were also a vehicle for regional and political factionalism, new forms of commercial vulgarity, and, disturbingly, the most provocative sorts of hate-mongering and religious chauvinism.
Cassette Culture is the first scholarly account of Indian popular music and the first case study of a technological revolution now occurring throughout the world. It will be an essential resource for anyone interested in modern India, communications theory, world popular music, or contemporary global culture.
Manuel shows that the cassette revolution, however, has brought new contradictions and problems to Indian culture. While inexpensive cassettes revitalized local subcultures and community values throughout the subcontinent, they were also a vehicle for regional and political factionalism, new forms of commercial vulgarity, and, disturbingly, the most provocative sorts of hate-mongering and religious chauvinism.
Cassette Culture is the first scholarly account of Indian popular music and the first case study of a technological revolution now occurring throughout the world. It will be an essential resource for anyone interested in modern India, communications theory, world popular music, or contemporary global culture.
322 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 20, 2018
Taped Music Revolutionizes Indian Music Industry
If you are not interested in exploring the details of the music biz in India, click off right now; this book is not connected to the Western pop scene. CASSETTE CULTURE is a study of the impact of cassette technology on popular music in North India. It explores the nature of the changes the arrival of widely-available cassettes has made on the structure of the Indian music industry and on popular music itself. I found it a well-written book with an absolute minimum of scholarly jargon, though it is an academic book. The author does not presume knowledge on the part of the reader and gives careful explanations of Indian musical styles, regional cultures, and music industry details. I found the balance between theory and description excellent. There is an interesting discussion of the popular music recording scene in other parts of the world, as well as a thorough historical look at that topic in India itself. The problem of piracy is dealt with in depth. There are three basic issues that underlie Manuel's study. First, the nature of control of the mass media in India. Second, the content of the mass media and how it is presented. And third, the effect of the content on the audience and how they use that content. With these guidelines, he shows how the arrival of cassette technology and cheap cassette players in the 1970s created a revolution in Indian popular music. By the 1980s, a transformation was underway, with the rise of hundreds of small regional producers, as well as a few giants. Escape from corporate control might lead us to think that the cassette "revolution" was a liberating force, but Manuel points out that this is not entirely so. The new technology has also been used to spread traditional, unprogressive, and even reactionary, bigoted messages through India. Cassettes have fuelled many a regionalist or separatist movement as well as the strivings of many an opportunistic politician.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the combination of music, popular media, technology and culture in India, one of the great civilizations of mankind, which seldom appears in Western media except for disasters, murders, or horror stories . Manuel has written a classic.
If you are not interested in exploring the details of the music biz in India, click off right now; this book is not connected to the Western pop scene. CASSETTE CULTURE is a study of the impact of cassette technology on popular music in North India. It explores the nature of the changes the arrival of widely-available cassettes has made on the structure of the Indian music industry and on popular music itself. I found it a well-written book with an absolute minimum of scholarly jargon, though it is an academic book. The author does not presume knowledge on the part of the reader and gives careful explanations of Indian musical styles, regional cultures, and music industry details. I found the balance between theory and description excellent. There is an interesting discussion of the popular music recording scene in other parts of the world, as well as a thorough historical look at that topic in India itself. The problem of piracy is dealt with in depth. There are three basic issues that underlie Manuel's study. First, the nature of control of the mass media in India. Second, the content of the mass media and how it is presented. And third, the effect of the content on the audience and how they use that content. With these guidelines, he shows how the arrival of cassette technology and cheap cassette players in the 1970s created a revolution in Indian popular music. By the 1980s, a transformation was underway, with the rise of hundreds of small regional producers, as well as a few giants. Escape from corporate control might lead us to think that the cassette "revolution" was a liberating force, but Manuel points out that this is not entirely so. The new technology has also been used to spread traditional, unprogressive, and even reactionary, bigoted messages through India. Cassettes have fuelled many a regionalist or separatist movement as well as the strivings of many an opportunistic politician.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the combination of music, popular media, technology and culture in India, one of the great civilizations of mankind, which seldom appears in Western media except for disasters, murders, or horror stories . Manuel has written a classic.
August 3, 2007
Really interesting about the impact of cassette culture and how it almost overnight changed the Indian LP industry from a dominant giant to thousand producers of cassettes.
On the one hand, this technology revitalized local and minority cultures but alos enabled political, religious and regional factions.
On the one hand, this technology revitalized local and minority cultures but alos enabled political, religious and regional factions.
January 2, 2022
Great book
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews